Spontaneous pneumomediastinum: A comprehensive review of diagnosis and management.

Rajeev A, Rachapudi S, Khan S, Singh V, Talwar A
Intractable & rare diseases research · 2024 · doi:10.5582/irdr.2024.01020 · PMID:39220281 · PMC11350202
OA: closed
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-08-28 ⓘ

This review of 24 case series characterizes spontaneous pneumomediastinum, noting it primarily affects young males with chest pain and dyspnea, while identifying asthma, smoking, and physical activity as key predisposing risk factors.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-08-23 · read from full text ⓘ

This comprehensive review systematically analyzed 24 case series to evaluate the diagnosis and management of spontaneous pneumomediastinum, a rare condition characterized by air in the mediastinum without traumatic or iatrogenic cause. The study found that patients are typically young males with an average age of 26.3 years, presenting primarily with chest pain, dyspnea, and subcutaneous emphysema, while risk factors include asthma, smoking, and recent physical exertion. The authors note that the condition generally follows a self-limiting course with good outcomes, emphasizing conservative management strategies based on the reviewed literature. The paper does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Pneumomediastinum is a rare condition defined by the presence of air in the mediastinum. In the absence of traumatic injury, iatrogenic injury, or clear etiology, it is called spontaneous pneumomediastinum (SPM). Spontaneous pneumomediastinum most commonly occurs in younger individuals and has a self-limiting course with a good outcome. The purpose of the present manuscript is to systematically review the existing literature on SPM evaluation and management for updated clinical understanding of this condition. A literature search was conducted of publications about SPM on MEDLINE/PubMed and Google Scholar by identifying all the articles with key search terms "pneumomediastinum" and "spontaneous pneumomediastinum". Inclusion criteria were case series published in English between 1980 and 2023. In total, 24 case series were selected and reviewed to determine presenting symptoms, clinical signs and predisposing factors associated with spontaneous pneumomediastinum. Most patients were male; the average age at diagnosis was 26.3 years. The most common presenting symptoms were chest pain and dyspnea. The most common exam finding was subcutaneous emphysema, in 35.4% of patients. Only 5.9% had the classic Hamman's sign. Risk factors include history of asthma, history of smoking, and recent physical activity. This manuscript presents an extensive review of relevant literature highlighting the diagnosis and essential management of spontaneous pneumomediastinum.
Full text 1,875 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 2 sections · click to expand

Keywords

spontaneous pneumomediastinum, mediastinal emphysema, chest pain, subcutaneous emphysema, systematic review 2024 Volume 13 Issue 3 Pages 138-147 Details

Abstract

Pneumomediastinum is a rare condition defined by the presence of air in the mediastinum. In the absence of traumatic injury, iatrogenic injury, or clear etiology, it is called spontaneous pneumomediastinum (SPM). Spontaneous pneumomediastinum most commonly occurs in younger individuals and has a self-limiting course with a good outcome. The purpose of the present manuscript is to systematically review the existing literature on SPM evaluation and management for updated clinical understanding of this condition. A literature search was conducted of publications about SPM on MEDLINE/PubMed and Google Scholar by identifying all the articles with key search terms "pneumomediastinum" and "spontaneous pneumomediastinum". Inclusion criteria were case series published in English between 1980 and 2023. In total, 24 case series were selected and reviewed to determine presenting symptoms, clinical signs and predisposing factors associated with spontaneous pneumomediastinum. Most patients were male; the average age at diagnosis was 26.3 years. The most common presenting symptoms were chest pain and dyspnea. The most common exam finding was subcutaneous emphysema, in 35.4% of patients. Only 5.9% had the classic Hamman's sign. Risk factors include history of asthma, history of smoking, and recent physical activity. This manuscript presents an extensive review of relevant literature highlighting the diagnosis and essential management of spontaneous pneumomediastinum. © 2024 International Research and Cooperation Association for Bio & Socio-Sciences Advancement Favorites & Alerts Recently viewed articles

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2024) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-09-27T09:11:36.575535+00:00